


Even his last name

by evaherondale



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, M/M, Non-Canon Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 07:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20042518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evaherondale/pseuds/evaherondale
Summary: Marcus and Draco have moved in together a while ago. Now Draco needs some advice from his best friend Pansy in taking the next step - or rather, not making a fool of himself whilst doing so.





	Even his last name

**Author's Note:**

> The Marcus/Draco tag could use some love, so I figured I could add this small one-shot. Could possibly be a two-shot, but we'll see.

“There’s have something I have to say,” Draco declared.

Pansy and him were hanging out at her apartment that night. They had gone out for dinner and a few drinks afterwards, but Draco kept postponing the subject that he needed to talk to Pansy about. He knew he had to talk to her first and he knew he had to get it out tonight, because if he didn’t he may never. He was uncharacteristically nervous and he was pretty sure that it showed.

Pansy eyed him over a glass of wise that she was nursing. She had chosen the couch to lounge on, whereas Draco sat down on the armchair. “Out with it, Malfoy,” she said. “You’ve been brooding the entire evening. Are you going to break up with Marcus or something?”

“What?” Draco asked. “Why would I do that?”

He wasn’t sure why she reached that conclusion. She was right: he had been brooding, but he hadn’t been brooding about breaking up with the person he had been with for little over a year now. In fact, it was quite the contrary. Marcus taught him that he could trust, that he could love, that he could be vulnerable and that nothing bad was going to happen as a result. Not anymore. In return, Draco reminded Marcus that he could be more than what people made him out to be and that limits like that were only holding him back from reaching his full potential. Draco believed in what Marcus could do instead of what others hoped he would and Marcus loved Draco for who he was and not for who people tried to make him be.

Obviously, that had never been the intent. The intent had been sleeping together one morning and remaining friends afterwards. But as they should have known, sleeping with your attractive friend never ended like that. It ended in wanting more, even if Draco was convinced he wasn’t worth to be given more to and Marcus just knew there wasn’t all that much he had to offer. They were both very wrong.

Pansy pulled a face at him. “I don’t know. It didn’t make sense to me either. The two of you are grossly in love. Next thing I know you’re going to tell me that you two eloped or something.”

“We should do that,” Draco said, completely serious. “So for when I propose, we just don’t let the news out. We just go on another vacation and by the time we get back we’re married. No big wedding and hundreds of guests. No picking out flowers and wedding invitations. We’ll just get married, spend our honeymoon in the bed or bath of an extremely luxurious hotel and come back to tell everyone it’s a done deal.”

And wasn’t that the dream? Back when they still went to Hogwarts, Draco used to joke that Pansy and him should flee to the United States to elope, just to get away from everything else. Oddly, though, the idea of a bigger wedding than just Marcus, him and someone who could officiate appealed to him. It seemed that Marcus was too important not to celebrate what they had and that was a first for Draco. He never thought of a wedding and marriage that way before.

“When you propose?” Pansy queried. “Maybe Marcus will propose.”

“I guess I’ll have to beat him to it,” Draco replied as he got a box with rings from the pockets of his jeans and handed it over to Pansy.

Before she opened the box she smiled at him excitedly. “You’re proposing? Is that why you were brooding?” she realized. “Why is that a subject to brood about?”

“What if he says no?” Draco replied, only to realize afterwards how insecure he sounded. He was usually the most confident person in the room (others would call it cocky), but when it came to Marcus that wasn’t always the case because he didn’t want to screw it up. “And I also don’t know how to propose. Remember when I tried to ask him to move in with me?”

That was a story that Pansy still loved to tell because she liked to humiliate him. Since everyone already knew the stories that happened at school (odds were they were there when it happened), she was very happy to get some new ammunition. When Draco tried to ask Marcus if they should move in together, he spent an entire evening trying to ask the question, to no avail. He couldn’t find the right moment and Marcus didn’t at all notice what Draco was trying to do. Once or twice, when a silence had fallen that Draco felt like he had to use, _disaster struck. _The first time an owl arrived with a letter. The second time Pansy came by and asked, with Marcus there, if Draco asked yet. Draco was quick to make up a story about going to a quidditch match together that he totally forgot to mention. It had been difficult enough to get said quidditch tickets afterwards.

Pansy shook her head, unsuccessfully trying to smother a grin. “No, that was not your best, I’m afraid,” she said, hardly refraining from chuckling. “That’s why people arrange proposals, Draco. You have to set the stage or you’ll never ask.”

Now, Draco was good at a number of things. Duelling, flying, brewing potions and being a stubborn ass were all things that came rather easily to him. But doing anything romantic had never been up his alley. He was too logical and pragmatic for that kind of stuff.

“So what do you suggest I do?” he asked her.

Pansy took a long sip of her wine and leaned back against the couch to study him afterwards before sighing theatrically. “I can’t tell you how to propose.” She studied the rings briefly before she put the box back onto the table in front of the couch. “You have the rings, so now you have to find a moment and a place. Don’t be out of left field. Built up to asking the question. And don’t be afraid he’ll say no. He won’t.”

Why was she so certain of that? “We’re hardly together for a year,” Draco said. “I mean, we moved in together and all, but what if he thinks that it’s too soon?”

“Do you think it’s too soon?” Pansy asked.

Draco shook his head. “I just know I want to spend the rest of my life with that man. I’ll even take his last name if that’s important to him.”

The remark made Pansy crack up. “I bet your parents will love that,” she said.


End file.
